A known double-bearing fishing reel includes a spool rotatably supported between left and right side plates, and a level wind mechanism. The level wind mechanism includes a fishing line guide for uniformly winding a fishing line on the spool. The fishing line guide reciprocates in a left-right direction in accordance with winding operation of a handle. Therefore a fishing line threaded through the fishing line guide is uniformly wound on the spool by the winding operation of the handle.
Such a conventional fishing reel has a disadvantage that fishing tackles cannot be casted far away since a relatively large resistive force works on the fishing line when the line in released from the reel. In order to overcome this disadvantage, there is a conventional example in which a portion of an insertion hole formed in the fishing line guide is made wider than the other portion of the insertion hole (see, for example, Japanese Patent Application Publication 2013-243997). The fishing line guide is arranged on the reel body such that a fishing line passes through the wider portion of the insertion hole when the fishing line is released, whereas the fishing line passes through the narrow portion of the insertion hole to be guided to the spool when the fishing line is wound on the spool. Accordingly the resistive force acting on the fishing line from the fishing line guide can be decreased when the fishing line is released, and the line is orderly guided to the spool through the narrow portion of the hole when the line is wound.
The narrow portion of the insertion hole in the conventional fishing line guide is configured to have a slightly larger width than the diameter of a fishing line in order to prevent the line from moving roughly in the left-right direction when the line is retained in the narrow portion. In this way, the fishing line can be orderly wound on the spool. However, when the fishing line is knotted, the knot tends to get caught on the narrow portion of the hole.